Turning research statements into questions and questions into aims

You open your email and your thesis supervisor congratulates you on writing a great research statement. In the next sentence, they ask you to turn this statement into research questions, aims and objectives. Unfortunately, they do not tell you how to do this. Do not worry, Thesis Upgrade can help!

The first step involves turning your research statement into an overall (core) research question (or a small number, usually two or three, sub questions). This can be done by asking: “what precisely do I need to know?” You are seeking to identify a problem, issue or area that you can research through a single question (or a small group of questions). Take, as an example, a research statement that sets out to examine the online marketing campaigns of two pharmaceutical firms – X company and Y company – in India, over the past five years (2017-2022). A core question might be to ask how did company X and company Y develop their online marketing campaigns? Alternatively maybe your research statement plans to explore the career advancement experiences of one hundred female employees in financial management positions in US-based, software multinational corporations with operations in Australia. A possible question to start with is to ask what are the career advancement experiences of such women in these financial management positions?

Step two involves taking time with the different question types and mapping how they relate to your overall topic. The good news is the process is straightforward, as there are only six question types that can be asked (who? what? where? when? why? how?). For example, if the central focus of your research is to investigate how road and weather conditions in Manchester, a region of the UK, contributes to car traffic accident rates. You might want to pose the following questions:

• Do I want to know why (for example, the causes of car accidents in Manchester, UK)? Or do I really want to know how (for instance, how are cars and drivers involved in accidents)?
• Do I wish to know where (for example, do car accidents occur on public roads or private land, on motorways, national roads or local roads)? Or do I need to know when (for instance, do car accidents occur during the day, or at night; at what time in the day; during hours of brightness or darkness)?
• Am I more concerned with what (for example, the types of car accidents that have occurred)? Or with who is responsible or has an interest (for instance, the driver, the passengers, the emergency services, the insurance company)?

It is usually best to stick to one question at a time. For instance, an insurance investigator trying to solve a particular case will want to know who caused the accident, but they may first have to establish when the incident occurred, where it happened, who was driving and who else was involved. The emergency services might prefer, for instance, to know why the accident occurred. As a researcher, exploring the topic more broadly, you may want to take a macro-view of these questions.

The more questions you have as a researcher, the more complex your research becomes. An effective way of dealing with complexity in your research statement, and ensuing questions, is to break it down into simplicity. A single question may be sufficient for many undergraduate research proposals. One, two or three research questions are usually enough to answer for postgraduate research. Doctoral studies obviously require greater depth and breadth.

Now that you have your questions, step three is to translate these questions into aims. Once you have decided an overall (core) question, it can be turned into a more specific aim, or aims, to help you design, plan and execute your actual research. An aim is the precise statement of what you, the researcher, intend to do/find out. For example:

• A research question, such as, who done it, could be changed to: “The aim of this study is to identify, define and describe who was responsible for ….”.
• Where does …. occur, could be reworded to: “The purpose of this study is to locate where … occurs and what steps can be taken to move …. to ….”.
• When did …. happen, could be rewritten as: “The intention of this research is to articulate when such events have happened in the past, so that proper risk management measurements and controls can be put in place to mitigate such events in future”.
• How could … be improved, could be expanded to: “The aim of this research is to critically evaluate the existing … operations in order to identify factors, which contribute to performance and recommend changes needed to improve technical efficiency”.

When you have written your aim or aims, it is useful to check that they are consistent with your research statement and research questions. As academics who regularly read and mark dissertations, we come across many examples of thesis drift. For example, the title claims that the research is ‘a description and explanation of the future direction of the insurance sector in Ireland’, but the introductory chapter sets out in a research statement that the student intends to ‘predict future trends in insurance fraud investigations’. They then pose a single research question, such as ‘who will be responsible for insurance fraud in the future’ and have an aim of ‘locating where fraud occurs’. All three are related, but with this aim the student is more likely to conclude their research with a finding such as ‘insurance fraud occurs in cities more than rural areas’. This finding does not align with the title, match the research statement, or answer the research question?

If you are doing quantitative (positivist) research, it is usually (though not always) necessary to convert your research question into a specific format, that is, a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a particular view, or a standpoint, which may be proposed, defended or proofed. Put simply, it is a question that is styled as a statement, which you set out to prove or disprove.

It is worth noting that an answer to a research question, or proof of hypothesis, is never definite. In many cases, demonstrating your own hypothesis does not rule out alternative hypotheses developed by you or others, and vice versa. It is, therefore, not easy to formulate a statement of this nature on your own. It is best to liaise with your supervisor or research methods lecturer when doing so. You can also check examples of hypotheses others have used (by reading similar theses and journal papers) and emulate their best practice.

Alternatively, you could buy our downloadable Developing Your Research Proposal Toolbook for immediate use. This informative handbook contains useful activities and practical checklists that help build your skills to develop a realistic, and feasible, research proposal.